


did you try to understand?

by chemicalflashes



Series: Instrumentality + What Now? [2]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Third Impact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 09:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalflashes/pseuds/chemicalflashes
Summary: On a cold day, a hedgehog will search out other hedgehogs to huddle up with to keep warm, but because of his prickles he is forced to make a choice — get close, stay warm and get stabbed, or keep away, stay safe and freeze. Humans are not so different from hedgehogs.Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu attempt to answer themselves and each other through the haze of Instrumentality and after it.





	did you try to understand?

**Author's Note:**

> Another NGE story! I am so happy to finally be able to bring these ideas in the back of my mind to reality.

Pain — white hot, surging pain in the whole of his body, starting on the tip of his toes and ending on the back of his head. Nothing is real. He doesn't care anymore either, too. The body melts, leaving the soul to wander aimlessly in a clear backdrop with nothing to ground it in. Voices, so many voices, all aiming daggers at him.

There's one voice which is distant and hollow and Shinji follows it. A train car now. Orange rays of sunset streaming in and three other people in there. Questions follow. He can see his body again. His head is hurting again. There are things in his mind and things outside his mind and they all seem to be the same.

A world where no one knows where one person ends and the other begins.

Asuka pushes herself forward, screaming something to his face and he should look at her face, but he doesn't. He tells her to be nice to him. They are all meant to be nice to him, after all. He has never done them any harm, has he? They won't understand his pain, anyway. They have no idea what's it like to suffer for real.

“Did you ever try to understand, Ikari?”

Understand what? Them? The others? Yes, yes he did! It was they who rejected him. They have no idea of his pain and suffering and yet he approached them out of his goodwill. Then why...why is he still in this limbo?

“Why do you pilot the Eva?”

“Because… because I have nothing else! When I pilot it, I get praise. I can be myself!”

“Idiot, don't make everything about yourself centre around the Eva...like me.”

He is losing a hold of his body again. Everything is shaking. People fade away. The voices go. Eternal silence, it seems… but then pastel yellow walls materialise. There's no one here. Just him and his mind playing games with each other. Absently, he notes that he is no longer wearing his school uniform. So, is this place really in his mind?

He needs help to stay himself — something...something...someone…

There's a silhouette in the kitchen of Misato's apartment. The only certainty in his mind from all her screaming; she always does leave a vivid impression on the onlookers. Her red hair and bright blue eyes always make her a discordant anomaly in the crowd. She'll help him. She has to. He was always nice to her, right?

Wrong. And Asuka lists all of the times he mistreated her on furious fingers shaking with anger.

“Don’t come near me. All you do is hurt me.”

Desperation claws at him. He's losing his form. Coming and going, mist-like. Temporary and fragile. Everyone is a distant figure in the fog.

“Asuka, help me. You're the only one who can help me.”

He’s bending over her seated form now, eyes wide and wavering around the fake room. He's no longer sure if this is his cursed mind or the reality. Maybe it's neither. Maybe it's a dream. Maybe, any moment he'll wake up in his bed and Asuka will be screaming over him to get ready for school.

The girl gets up and corners him. A push and shove later, he's surprised he can still feel the carpeted floor beneath him and the hot coffee burning his shoulder. This world doesn't feel as fake as it should be.

“Pathetic,” a faraway voice calls out.

The desperation to stay himself is out of bounds now. How is he supposed to imagine himself if no one would help him? More screaming. More throwing away of random objects. These aren't really his arms. He isn't sure what he is doing. He just knows the primal need to stay himself in this loose world where everyone can look in anyone's mind.

And she refuses him.

Pain, once again, white hot and tremendous and he's so angry. How dare she refuse his pleas for help in his most desperate hour? She'll pay for her arrogance; she has to, after everything he did for her.

(Did you ever try to understand?

Did you?

 _Did you?_ )

His arms shoot out to grab her elegant, narrow neck, to just choke her out of his life and banish her thankless self from his plane of existence.

The world turns red.

(“You never understood.”)

 

* * *

 

There's something tugging at him when he opens his eyes and the ground shifts ever so slightly beneath him as he tosses and turns. That's sand.

Weary and tired eyes look at a red sky and a red sea. There's so much red now. Her red plugsuit isn't so distinctive now. Her looks just merge with the background. He wonders how she feels about that and if she even thinks of this matter.

“We need to find clean water,” she says as he sits up. “We should look for it together.”

The Asuka after Third Impact isn't the one he knew before it. This Asuka doesn't argue much. She certainly has her fire but it's more of a glowing ember now, instead of a raging one. This Asuka is telling him to do stuff _and_ taking the initiative to do those tasks herself too.

(This Asuka caressed his cheek when he was frightened and alone and so very, very angry at her and just _everything_ that ever existed. Her hand was just like his mother’s.

But Shinji doesn't like to think about the events and thought processes that led her to doing that in the first place. He is not proud of his choices.)

“Fine,” he tells her. Just one word. He doesn't feel like talking now. He feels that he won't ever feel like having a conversation now, especially since she's the only other person left on earth. She probably doesn't want to talk to him more than the bare minimum, anyway. All they did back before it all was fight. All they did in instrumentality was fight. He has no reason to think it would be otherwise now.

They search for water and other supplies in silence.

 

* * *

 

Asuka looks at the boy sitting across her, on the opposite side of the bonfire. It's cold now, much colder than it used to be before the impact. They have managed to find some sheets and a tent in the few wrecked up JSSDF trucks they inspected but she can tell these things aren't going to be enough against the temperature drop that she can feel coming. Shinji doesn't say much now. Well, it's not like he said an awful lot before the Impact but now it's different.

Bored, Asuka glances up towards the sky. The stars shine more brightly than they used to and she would have called the scene pretty had it not been for the ugly, red ring of souls scattered across the expanse of the sky.

Everything has changed so much; the world, Shinji and she herself. She never thought she could change but here she is, at the end of the world, stuck with an asocial boy she doesn't like and cries herself to sleep. Asuka had vowed to never cry when she was four years old. Oh, how that has changed.

If she thinks about it, Instrumentality feels like a wild fever dream. But she knows it happened for real. It was strange to have her mind looked in by so many people and she just ran away from it all. There was an awful lot of Shinji too and a recurrent question.

(“Did you ever try to understand?”)

Admittedly, she didn't. But unlike the idiot sitting three metres away from her, she won't lie and say she did. She had tried being kind to Wondergirl but that one was unsociable. She had tried her damndest best to keep up with Shinji’s stupidity...but yes, she had never tried to understand. She had never bothered to knock on his door when he lied nearly comatose in his bed every evening, listening to God knows what on his stupid SDAT player. She won't lie. Mama had told her to stop lying to herself and to others too.

She never tried to understand, yes. But did they ever try to understand _her_? Did they try to understand why she didn't try to understand them? Now that she thinks carefully, it seems like an inherently selfish argument. But then, she had always been like that ever since her mother died.

She recalls the fifteenth angel’s mind attack.

(She isn't afraid of seeing such painful memories now; she can cry now. It feels relieving.)

She had been screaming. Actually, there had been an awful lot of screaming. Misato was telling her to retreat but she was stupid back then so she didn't listen. She thought Misato had no concern for her as a person, but only as a pilot. So she told them all that she would rather die fighting than retreat to be humiliated by the likes of Wondergirl (and Shinji; _especially_ Shinji because he had brought her down long before this and she just —).

And then it had broken into her mind like a hot knife on a slab of butter. It happened in flashes then. She was yelling because when she had thought of help, she had wanted to see Kaji. But he had dismissed her as a child like always and she saw Shinji. Infuriated, she had asked what was he doing in her mind because he had never helped her.

And then the angel had shown her the memory where he had jumped into the volcano of Mt. Asama to save her from burning away in lava.

In the warm glow of the fire, Asuka chuckles quietly. Shinji raises his eyes to study her, but she doesn't notice that.

‘It didn't need to do that,’ she muses inwardly, still unaware of the boy's eyes on her, 'I was already aware of my contradictions.’

Those angels and Lilith herself (itself?) sure knew how to puncture a hole through someone's ego. A half-hearted chuckle sounds from her throat again. The fifteenth broke her mind with her own paradoxes. And she feels…no, she _knows_ that this is what happened with the silent boy she has for company in this abandoned world. She was there, after all.

She saw it.

The her in his mind, arguing with him. Cornering him. The real him in darkness. She had an urge to kick him back then. Thankfully her counterpart in his thoughts did that. At least stupid Shinji could characterise her properly. But something unexpected happened next.

He actually killed her. Snuffed her out of existence and well, then everyone died.

‘Not died’, she thinks, 'but everyone became part of a hive mind.’ She looks at Shinji and he quickly averts his eyes. 'Except him. He came back…and me too, for some reason.’

She would be lying to herself if she says she doesn't know why she came back, though and Mama had stressed on the point of not doing that a lot of times. Unlike Shinji’s instrumentality, hers had been calm. She had seen him sitting alone in the darkness and when it had all turned red, she had been whisked away to her own dream world and forgotten everything.

She wasn't exactly happy back there but it had been nice to lead a relatively normal life with normal problems. But then a whisper had carried on the wind as she walked on a footpath.

“Asuka,” it had said. She had turned around but no one was there to see. The whisper continued nonetheless.

“I'm not here.”

In truth, she had followed him out of Instrumentality. She had followed this pathetic excuse of a human being and ended up in this rotten existence with a mortal, physical body once again. Asuka clenches and unclenches her right hand. She does a lot of that, lately and she never had this habit before Third Impact.

Her arm and eye seem fine but she's still afraid of what she might find underneath the bandages, so she hasn't taken them off yet. There's probably scarring in there but she doesn't want to see it, not when she still feels so ugly and used.

Shinji has scars too, raw and pink, on his palms. But she doesn't ask how they came to be. She wonders if there are more of them on his body but she'll never know.

The fire crackles away. The night grows colder. Asuka slips inside the tent. He won't talk. She won't become his crutch. There are questions to be asked and answers to be shouted but she's not in the mood, not when he's worse by being more quiet than his former self and she cries herself to sleep.

This is how the world will end — quietly and emptily, she thinks.

He'll never understand, and she supposes, that she won't too.

 

* * *

 

Sometime in the middle of the night when she's sniffing and trying her damndest best to hold it all in, Shinji turns around from his edge of the tent and holds her limply, almost afraid.

(She supposes he should be, after everything that has happened.)

But he holds her without her asking him or him saying anything and she lets him. If anything Third Impact has taught her, it is that it's okay to be vulnerable at times. That it is human. And it's not like he's the only one afraid of what might happen or what the fallout might be or the consequences that can come out of his action; Asuka is afraid too.

Afraid of him and his fingers wringing the life out of her. She still hasn't lost all of her pride to show it or tell him, but she can admit it to herself. But as he holds her, still loose and tentative, she thinks that maybe he's trying to understand. For real.

The old Shinji would have never done this. The old Shinji had tried to kiss her in her sleep but had not shown any action when she had been actually kissing him. The old Asuka would have flinched away from this contact. The old Asuka had smiled when he had saved her but pinched his nose shut when she had kissed him.

So when he holds her, she lets him and runs a hand along his arm to end up on his palm and grasps it. There are no words spoken between them and she knows that come morning, there will still be no words. She isn't going to forgive him for his misdeeds so easily, even if she's a little afraid of him. Reluctantly, she has accepted that he isn't going to open up readily too, given their past history with each other.

As the darkness of sleep finally takes over the girl and her breath evens, she feels the scar tissue in his hand and wishes everything to be okay.

 

* * *

 

Shinji wakes up early the next morning, takes a single glance at Asuka sleeping peacefully beside him and leaves. It's still cold but he'll be fine. These days, by midday, it's back to scorching heat, anyway. He makes his way out to the beach where he has put a marker for everyone's grave. It's a roughly fashioned cross produced out of driftwood that he had made in a state of being half mad. Misato’s pendant is nailed to it.

He's here for that. He should take down this poorly made monument because no one is actually dead. His mother and Rei did say that everyone could come back. Shinji pulls out the nail binding the pendant to the cross. The pendant is not shiny anymore and perhaps it has been stained by the LCL rains they seem to have now.

The object sits innocently in his hand, saying nothing, because of course, it cannot do that, but the words are loud and insistent in his head.

“Pilot the Eva one more time and break your cycle as an Eva pilot. Find your own answers as to why you came here and why you're still here.”

“I did,” he mutters as he continues looking at the metal in his hand, “I broke the cycle, Misato. But I don't understand why I'm still here. I know I am myself and nothing more or nothing less and I had said that I deserve to be here, but is that really true?”

“And when you settle the matter, make sure to come back,” she had said.

He clutches it, the only link he has left to his guardian and commanding officer now. The only one who actually cared. The only other person who had tried to stay with him when it had all begun to end, even if her methods were decidely wrong and he had turned her away too.

He was back but where was she? He knew Misato was definitely present in the red sea occupying the majority of his view; but would she be coming back? He wishes he knew. He wishes she came back at this very instant.

His eyes are a hot blur now. He hasn't cried ever since a week ago he found Asuka on the beach. Abandoning any pretense of having a control on his emotions, he drops down to his knees and cries. He was a fool back then when he had thought that others didn’t have problems as big as him. Arrogant of his pain, in a way.

It is all so dumb.

He cannot even talk now. Last night he had held Asuka but was he even allowed to do that? She hadn't hit him, but what was to say she didn't do that out of fear? She probably hates him now for real and just doesn't say it.

He wishes Misato was here to tell him it'll be okay. He's so alone and terrified.

“I knew you'd be here.”

The voice quietens him down with its suddenness.

And Asuka is there, right behind him. She isn't smiling, but she isn't frowning either. Her face is an empty mask and her one eye that isn't bandaged up, doesn't betray any discernable emotion.

She offers him her left hand and for a moment he just looks at her, confused as to what she is doing. She shakes her arm. “Get up, we need to do lots of things!”

He takes up her offer and stands but doesn't say anything. Shinji sniffs every now and then but doesn't stop as they walk back to their tent.

 

* * *

 

That morning, they go through the motions by the rote like they have been doing for the past six days. Cooking, cleaning and hunting for food, water and clothes. It's such a dreary existence now.

Shinji doesn't say anything when she hands him the instant ramen packets for dinner that evening. Actually, he hasn't even said the usual 'fine’, 'okay’ and 'I’ll do that’ today.

She has caught him looking at his hands between his chores, muttering who knows what. It's ironic how the same hands have saved her, tried to kill her and held her in her sleep. It seems so incongruous and preposterous.

But he did hold her last night when she was crying yet again. He did try to reach out and understand. Maybe he hasn't been talking because he thinks she doesn't want him to. Maybe she can try to understand him too. Maybe they'll just end up breaking each other all over again. Maybe she'll hate him more by the end of it. Maybe he'll actually kill her this time.

The possibilities are endless. She really should try to understand him. It’s only the two of them now. She will never know if she doesn't try.

“Hey, Shinji,” she says softly, “do you want to talk?”

Blunt and simple. There's no time for pretenses when everything has ended.

The boy’s eyes widen for a split second. If she had not been watching him intently, she would have never seen his almost imperceptible nod.

_Yes._

**Author's Note:**

> The "I'm not here" scene comes from the alternate live action sequence that could have been in End of Evangelion.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked it! Please leave a comment if you want to say anything. I would like to hear your thoughts.


End file.
